4

I'm venturing into the world of asp.net mvc. I have not yet understood whether it makes sense to use a custom Membership Provider or use the Profile provider for the user management?

Safari
  • 11,437
  • 24
  • 91
  • 191

2 Answers2

6

Membership provider - manages user names, email addresses, and passwords.

Profile provider - manages all other custom user settings, such as name and preferences.

So, to answer your question, you should use both, because they serve different purposes.

Scott Rippey
  • 15,614
  • 5
  • 70
  • 85
3

One, Membership providers and Profile providers serve two different purposes. The Membership provider provides a user list and authentication functionality. The Profile provider provides a way to store application-specific data associated with each user.

Whether you need a custom provider depends on what type of datastore you want to use. The two built-in Membership providers allow for using an Active Directory domain (generally only appropriate if you're developing an application for a corporate intranet) or an MS SQL Server Database. The one built-in Profile provider uses MS SQL. If you want to use a different type of datastore, for example a PostgreSQL database, then you'll need a custom provider for that particular datastore.

mloar
  • 1,514
  • 11
  • 11
  • So, from what you say, i do not need to extend a membership provider to store more user data (phone, city, etc.). I would like to use SQL Server. – Safari Sep 25 '11 at 22:52
  • That is correct. You can simply use the built-in profile provider to store this information in SQL Server. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2y3fs9xs.aspx has a good overview. – mloar Sep 25 '11 at 23:09